Open Source Software (OSS) has great potential to benefit higher education and is increasingly recognized as a core component of open science. The community that supports OSS for teaching and administrative purposes, such as Moodle and MIT Mathlets, has made great progress in seeding, scaling, and sustaining their projects within the academy and has built a robust and sustainable infrastructure. However, academic silos have made it difficult for this community to share knowledge with those developing OSS for research purposes, and OSS for research tend to be niche and less visible.

OSS sustainability requires ongoing community engagement to update and maintain code, identification of a viable financial model, management of dependencies, upkeep of documentation, and navigating legal and licensing needs. Indeed, estimates suggest that a high percentage of OSS software projects are abandoned within their first few years. Institutional support, along with effective leadership and governance, are additional key factors in the survivability of OSS projects. OSS for research purposes often faces further challenges such as a reliance on grant funding and the devaluation of open source development and maintenance in the academic incentive structure.

Today we are excited to announce a new project to convene stakeholders in the open-source ecosystem. Through an in-person workshop, tentatively scheduled for August 2025, we will bring representatives from different OSS communities together to identify actionable pathways that researchers and universities can take to build a robust infrastructure for those developing OSS for research purposes. The project is made possible with the generous support of the US National Science Foundation and a gift from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and will be conducted in collaboration with the Apereo Foundation, a non-profit member organization that supports and develops open source software for higher education institutions.

Key topics of discussion at the workshop will include:

  • What lessons can OSS research communities learn from the experiences of academic and administrative open source developers?
  • What are the opportunities for collaboration between disparate OSS communities on campus to facilitate reception of OSS and develop shared infrastructure at institutions with different research profiles and resources?
  • Why has it been more difficult to create and sustain open source initiatives focused on research than on academic and administrative practices? What novel solutions could address these challenges?

Participants will leave the workshop with concrete and prioritized ideas about how to build sustainable research OSS communities on campus. Ithaka S+R will publish findings from the workshop, including recommendations for researchers, administrators, and other stakeholders in a final report that will focus on how to create and sustain robust OSS infrastructures in a range of university settings. For general inquiries about this project, or about Ithaka S+R’s other work on OSS research software, please contact Chelsea McCracken (chelsea.mccracken@ithaka.org).

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant. No. 2512157. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.